


Of misfortune

by erimies



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, M/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4511799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erimies/pseuds/erimies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris runs from Danarius earlier than in canon. He and Hawke meet in Ferelden, years before the Blight. Nothing good happens for a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of misfortune

**Author's Note:**

> This could probably be read as gen. There's very little of anything resembling romance. This story was a gift from the gods of inspiration, but because they graced me with the idea at four am, I am not as grateful as I might have been.

 

Fenris first met Hawke during an ambush by slavers.

He’d had a good run of it in Ferelden, but Danarius had a way of finding him, and though Fenris may have had superior training and lyrium-induced powers, they had numbers on their side.

Until the gangly boy made his appearance, like he was some sort of a gallant knight of a story.

“I won’t let you have him,” he declared, and summoned fire onto his palms.

It was difficult to say who was more frightened, the slavers or Fenris. He scrambled to get away, out of the way, as the slavers tried to do the same.

They were all burned to ashes. Fenris was not.

“Get away from me, _mage_!” Fenris spat furiously, dragging himself away with his good hand. He was bloodied and some things felt broken, but he’d be damned if he let the mage get any closer. The boy’s face fell, but he stopped in his tracks.

“Look, I’m trying to help,” he said. “I saved you, didn’t I? I know, I’m an apostate, but…”

Fenris spat at him, then, terror running cold in his veins. The mage might have been a boy still, no older than fifteen, but there was _always_ something they wanted. He wasn’t going to buy into any honeyed lie that dribbled from a mage’s lips.

”Okay, look, just... you go your way, I go my way, and we forget this whole thing ever happened?”

The boy looked frustrated now, and just a little fearful. Of course, Fenris realised, this was not Tevinter. Mages were actually watched here, so that they could not harm others.

He clenched his fists, and watched the boy walk away, and hot anger churned in his belly.

 

…

 

“Are you sure?” the Templar asked, eyebrow raised in askance. “I realise people may act strangely on occasion, but it isn’t always because of a demon –“

“I saw it,” Fenris hissed. “He burned that man to a crisp! There were five of them, and he killed them all!”

“Really? That’s strange,” the Templar said, still infuriatingly calm at the news of an apostate hiding in his village. “Usually fugitive mages are more discreet. Were they threatening him?”

“No, they were trying to… to kill me. What does that matter? He’s an apostate!”

“Wait. He saved you. And now you’re snitching him out?” The Templar balked, like Fenris was at fault, like he had done something wrong.

Fenris pressed his lips together and seethed. The Templar shook his head and went away.

What did that even matter, if the kid had saved him? Sooner or later, that same kid would hurt others. He deserved to be locked away.

That day, the memory of his shackles ached worse than lyrium.

 

…

 

Fenris heard the battle before he saw it, and when he saw it, it was over.

The ground was littered with dead Templars. Fenris swallowed. He had thought to watch and learn, see how mages were killed, but…

But it was the mages who had persevered.

They were huddled together at the edge of the battlefield, which had been a nice green meadow, but was rapidly turning brown with rusting blood and charred flesh.

They were weeping over the body of a small girl. She couldn’t have been older than nine or ten.

Fenris swallowed. He shouldn’t be here.

“Why?” wailed the woman who must be the mother. She was sobbing hysterically. “Why now? We have done nothing! We lived quietly, bothered no one! Why _Bethany_?”

“Their leader apologised to me,” the father said in a hollow voice. “Said he wished things could have gone on as they used to be. Apparently he was given the tip by some weird elf.”

The boy howled then, like a broken thing, like he was about to follow his sister to the grave. It sounded like it tore its way through his throat, that surely the boy should cough up blood afterwards.

Fenris turned around and walked away. Shame churned in his belly, and made fast friends with his anger.

 

…

 

Fenris found the boy later, as his family was preparing to leave the village. The boy sat next to the cart, drawing little stick figures on sand. There was a terrible dead look in his eyes.

“Come to gloat?” he asked. There was no life in his voice either. “She liked butterflies. She wished we could have had a cat. I always gave her my pudding because I couldn’t say no to her puppy eyes. And now she’s gone. She never hurt _anyone_.”

Tears were dribbling down his cheeks. He turned to look at Fenris. “I wish I hadn’t saved you.”

Fenris said nothing. After a while, he walked away, and hated everything, and especially he hated the mage for making him regret.

Somewhere behind, he heard the creak of a cart wheel.

 

…

 

Fenris didn’t learn the boy’s name until years later, when some strange fate wound their paths together again.

He found the boy in the Chantry, sobbing next to a wooden casket.

He had grown, now, and was almost a man. Fenris didn’t recognise him at first. He walked past, and would not have paid him another glance if the boy hadn’t looked up and remembered him.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said, and there was enough contempt in his voice to drown in. “Wow, if there was one person in the world I didn’t want to see again…”

Fenris turned to look. “Oh,” was all he could say, as he took in the features, subtracted several years and made the connection.

“A… a friend of yours, Hawke?” asked the Chantry sister, with what seemed like fairly foolish optimism, or possibly wilful ignorance.

“No,” Hawke spat. He stood and left without another word.

“You’ll have to forgive him,” the Chantry sister whispered. “His father just died. Prolonged illness, apparently, but the family has had it rough. I understand they lost their youngest child a few years back.”

Fenris left the Chantry and the loose-lipped sister behind, and made plans to leave Lothering as well.

He didn’t.

 

…

 

For the next two years, Hawke and Fenris made an admirable effort of avoiding each other. Or, so Fenris told himself. Somehow he couldn’t stop himself from trying to catch a glimpse every time he thought he saw Hawke’s tall profile in his peripheral vision.

He gave himself several stern talks, to no avail. He told himself it wasn’t guilt. It _wasn’t_. Mages should be taken to the Circles for the good of everyone. They shouldn’t have resisted. Bethany would have lived.

Fenris learned a great deal of the Hawke family during those years, mostly because his ears picked out the name every time it floated through the air. They worked a bit of tough land, the only thing available to them. They had a goat and three chickens. They were kind, decent folk, though deeply saddened by tragedy, and the youngest child had left for the king’s army after some sort of a row with his brother. It was said, some whispered, that they were bad luck, that death followed them, that they were cursed.

Shortly before they spoke again, Hawke all but disappeared, and after Fenris found himself peering in through various windows to see if that was where Hawke lived, he thought it better to leave the village to hunt down the gang of slavers he had heard of.

When Fenris returned to Lothering, he walked past the village’s graveyard. Hawke was sitting there, hunched over a grave.

Fenris paused. An old shame turned his stomach, stubbornly refusing to allow time to dull its edge.

He walked through the gate and approached Hawke. For what, he didn’t know, and all words died in his throat when he saw that Hawke was clutching his mother's shawl.

Hawke turned to look at him. If Fenris had thought his eyes dead before, these looked like they had never seen life at all.

“She never recovered,” Hawke said. “First Bethany, then father. And Carver left for the army. She was weak from sorrow.”

He pressed his face in his hands and wept. Fenris sat next to him and pulled him against his side.

Hawke didn’t try to resist. “I wish I hadn’t saved you,” he said.

Fenris didn’t say anything. After Hawke fell to an exhausted sleep, Fenris laid him gently on the ground and walked away.

 

…

 

After that, Fenris started to look out for Hawke. It was because the man wasn’t doing a good job of it, he told himself. He made sure Hawke had food in his cupboard and firewood in his shed. He reminded Hawke to bathe and wash his clothes and feed the animals.

Eventually, the village caught on. The most popular and scandalous rumour was that they were illicit lovers. Fenris might have laughed at that, if it didn’t make him cringe.

But Hawke must have been made of something stronger than his mother, because he got better.

Fenris told himself that this was good, that he’d be glad when Hawke didn’t need him any longer.

And he might have eventually walked away, if his master hadn’t finally tracked him down.

 

…

 

The day had been so normal it was almost surreal when disaster struck. Hawke hadn’t been home, and Fenris finally found him in the graveyard. He was staring at his mother’s grave again. Fenris was about to put a hand on his shoulder, maybe tell him to go home and eat something, when he felt his skin crawl and lyrium prickle.

Dread crawled down his spine like a cold, slimy snail.

“Ah, my little Fenris,” drawled Danarius, emerging from thin air like some sort of a wraith of misfortune. “You gave me quite the chase.”

Fenris couldn’t find his tongue. He thought he must have swallowed it. Hawke looked between them, and comprehension chased away the dull surprise.

“You are… then, he was…”

“My little pet,” Danarius confirmed. “I’m afraid he must have been very confused without me, and latched onto you as his new master. Thank you for returning him in good condition. You shall, of course, be handsomely rewarded.”

Hawke’s face was terribly blank. Fenris didn’t notice. Despair had stolen over every angry instinct he might have had.

Hawke would hand him over, of course he would, because this impossible dream was over. What was he to Hawke, but the killer of his family?

But Hawke shook his head.

“No. I won’t let you have him,” Hawke said. He stood up and gave Fenris a tired smile. “After all these years, I finally understand. Shall we?”

Fenris could only nod numbly.

Then, there was fire and blood and he had bought his freedom forever.

 

…

 

“Why?”

“I don’t know. For the sake of the principles father taught me, maybe.”

“I’m sorry about your sister.”

“I know.”

“Will you forgive me?”

“No.”

Fenris sat next to Hawke. The nights were cold this early in the spring, he told himself, and he didn’t want either of them to catch a cold.

Hawke curled closer to him. For no reason at all, Fenris’ heart skipped a beat.

One year later, Lothering burned with the Blight.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine Hawke never did quite forgive Fenris, but things slowly got better.


End file.
